"Lunacy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the domestic discord or the bewitchment and supposed lunacy the most powerful factor in the plot of error. Which is the most comical and which the most tragic ...
— Shakespeare Study Programs; The Comedies • Charlotte Porter and Helen A. Clarke
... better known as "Barry Cornwall," was a barrister and commissioner in lunacy. Most probably he assumed the pseudonym for the same reason that Dr. Paris published his 'Philosophy in Sport made Science in Earnest' anonymously—because he apprehended that, if known, it might ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... fellow's lunacy became less harmless as he grew older. It developed into a kind of kleptomania. Should a housewife have a family wash hanging on her clothes-lines, it was not infrequently the case that many of the articles would mysteriously ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett
... privileged than the rest of mankind, is subject to all the defects and failings of it. He may therefore be incapable of directing the government and dispensing the public treasure, &c. either by absence, by infancy, lunacy, deliracy, or apathy, whether by nature or casual infirmity, or lastly, by some invincible prejudices of mind, contracted and fixed by education and habit, with unalterable resolutions superinduced, in matters wholly inconsistent and incompatible with the laws, religion, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... of September 4, 1870, was capped by the lunacy of the Commune of Paris in 1871. This latter was more than France could bear, and a wholesome breeze of national feeling stirs in the 'murders grim and great,' by which the victorious Army of Versailles avenged the cowardly massacre of the hostages, and the destruction ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... am strictly correct in saying that in half a century, while the population increased by seventy-five per cent., lunacy had increased by two hundred and fifty ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... nerves. One spoke, as did still Prof. Pomme at the end of the eighteenth century, "of the shrivelling up of the nerves."[14] But above all, one preserved the conviction that these queer disorders were very different to the mental disorders of lunacy. These peculiar individuals had, it was said, all their reason; they remained capable of understanding their fellow creatures and of being understood by them; they were not to be expelled from society like the poor lunatics; ...
— A Psychiatric Milestone - Bloomingdale Hospital Centenary, 1821-1921 • Various
... able to give each of the officers a drop of whiskey from my flask, and I never saw men drink so thirstily. Their hands and lips trembled as they took it, and their eyes shone like lunacy, as the hot drops sank to the cold vitals, and pricked the frozen blood. Mingling with the privates, I stirred up some native specimens of patriotism, that appeared to be in great doubt as to the causes and ends of the war. They were very ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... friend. "Lunacy, chloroform, a bleeding will overthrow it; and, inasmuch as it is not always thinking, it is not a substance which does nothing ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... Beyootiful, and the Ter-rew, and representing in themselves the current forms of Religion, Art, and Science. These three Snt George successively challenges, tackles, and flattens out—the first as lunacy, the second as harlotry, the third as witchcraft. But even so the play would not be long enough had I not padded a good deal of buffoonery into the scene where the five corpses are brought ...
— A Christmas Garland • Max Beerbohm
... second stage of panic, which is next door to collapse. I tried to cry, but could only raise a squeak like a bat. A wheel started to run round in my head, and, when I looked at the moon, I saw that it was rotating in time. Things were very bad with me. It was 'Mwanga who saved me from lunacy. He had been appointed my keeper, and the first I knew of it was a violent kick in the ribs. I rolled over on the grass down a short slope. The brute squatted beside me, and prodded ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... Earl of Bradford was brought before the Lord Chancellor, to be examined upon application for a statute of lunacy against him, the chancellor asked him, "How many legs has a sheep?"—"Does your lordship mean," answered Lord Bradford, "a live sheep or a dead sheep?"—"Is it not the same thing?" said the chancellor. "No, my lord," said Lord Bradford, "there ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... levity of Philander, the more he rends her heart, and sets her on the rack; and concluding him false, she could no longer contain her rage, but broke out into all the fury that madness can inspire, and from one degree to another wrought her passion to the height of lunacy: she tore her hair, and bit his hands that endeavoured to restrain hers from violence; she rent the ornaments from her fair body, and discovered a thousand charms and beauties; and finding now that both his strength and reason were too weak to prevent ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... little trait of Sir Sidney's constitutional temperament, and the little service through which I and my two comrades contributed materially to his relief, as an illustration of that infirmity which besieges the nervous system of our nation. It is a sensitiveness which sometimes amounts to lunacy, and sometimes even tempts to suicide. It is a mistake, however, to suppose this morbid affection unknown to Frenchmen, or unknown to men of the world. I have myself known it to exist in both, and particularly ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... Groningue—1840), alleges a case (which, however, we do not remember to have met) where the client ventured to object:—"Mon roi Apollon, je crois que tu es fou." But cases are obvious which look this way, though not going so far as to charge lunacy upon the lord of prophetic vision. Battus, who was destined to be the eldest father of Cyrene, so memorable as the first ground of Greek intercourse with the African shore of the Mediterranean, never consulted the Delphic Oracle in reference to his eyes, which happened to be diseased, ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... 'the frenzy has at all events passed. You have the common-sense to treat it as if it had never been; and really I am tempted to believe that it was literal lunacy. Last night ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... little doubt I might have entertained of my poor friend's insanity was put finally at rest. I had no alternative but to conclude him stricken with lunacy, and I became seriously anxious about getting him home. While I was pondering upon what was best to be done, Jupiter's voice ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... the State or private asylums were huddled together in the poorhouses of the various counties. Their condition was heartrending. They were constantly exposed to neglect, frequently to extremes of cold and hunger, and sometimes to brutality: thus mild lunacy often became raving madness. For some years before my election to the Senate the need of a reform had been urged upon the legislative committees by a physician —Dr. Willard of Albany. He had taken this evil condition of things ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... moon under her feet, which was a most wonderful sight. Now, as Bigot explained it to me, this was to signify that she was not of the nature of other women; for they have all the moon at their heads, and consequently their brains are always troubled with a lunacy. This makes me willing to believe what you said, ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... black magic which desires power for the sake of power alone than to any transcendental type. Thus it included the power to render the magician invisible, to change his bodily shape, to produce an enchanted sleep, to induce lunacy, and to ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... impracticable, which is extended beyond common effects, or comprises many intermediate operations. Many that presume to laugh at projectors, would consider a flight through the air in a winged chariot, and the movement of a mighty engine by the steam of water as equally the dreams of mechanick lunacy; and would hear, with equal negligence, of the union of the Thames and Severn by a canal, and the scheme of Albuquerque, the viceroy of the Indies, who in the rage of hostility had contrived to make Egypt a barren desert, by turning the Nile ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... witnessed such an attempt; and on that occasion a benevolent old gentleman endeavored to soothe his three holy associates, by suggesting that, if the outsides were indicted for this criminal attempt at the next assizes, the court would regard it as a case of lunacy (or delirium tremens) rather than of treason. England owes much of her grandeur to the depth of the aristocratic element in her social composition. I am not the man to laugh at it. But sometimes it expressed itself in extravagant shapes. The course taken with the infatuated outsiders, in the ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... the zealous Sisters pay 'em too; Justices, bound by Oath and Obligation, Pay them the utmost Price of their Damnation, Not to disturb our useful Congregation. Nor let the Learned Rabble be forgot, Those pious Hands that crown our hopeful Plot. No, modern Statesmen cry, 'tis Lunacy To barter Treason with such Rogues as we. But subtiler Oliver did not disdain His mightier Politicks with ours to join. I for all Uses in a State was able, Cou'd Mutiny, cou'd fight, hold forth, and cobble. Your lazy Statesman may sometimes direct, But your small busy ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... I bought a dog—a queen! Ah Tiny, dear departing pug! She lives, but she is past sixteen And scarce can crawl across the rug. I loved her beautiful and kind; Delighted in her pert Bow-wow: But now she snaps if you don't mind; 'Twere lunacy ...
— Fly Leaves • C. S. Calverley
... plants have been credited at most periods with hurtful and injurious properties. Thus, there is a popular idea that during the flowering of the bean more cases of lunacy occur than at any other season. [17] It is curious to find the apple—such a widespread curative—regarded as a bane, an illustration of which is given by Mr. Conway. [18] In Swabia it is said that an apple plucked from a graft on the whitethorn will, ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... Atheist's Mass Cesar Birotteau The Commission in Lunacy Lost Illusions A Distinguished Provincial at Paris A Bachelor's Establishment The Secrets of a Princess The Government Clerks Pierrette A Study of Woman Scenes from a Courtesan's Life Honorine The Seamy Side of History The Magic Skin A Second ...
— Another Study of Woman • Honore de Balzac
... waiting to see you at eleven o'clock to-morrow morning. The matter is so utterly vital to the happiness of all your family, that I cannot imagine you will fail to come." Now, what's the meaning of it? Is it sheer impudence, or lunacy, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... improvements effected in the administration of justice during the late session, and of which the last volume of the statute-book affords abundant evidence, principally under the heads of bankruptcy, insolvency, and lunacy. Great and salutary alterations have been effected in these departments, as well as various others; the leading statutory changes being most ably carried into effect by the Lord Chancellor, who continues to preside over his court, and to discharge ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... conscience, and reason continually disallow and ignore what consciousness presents; and what are they but habit and latent instinct asserting themselves and forcing us to disregard our midsummer madness? Idiocy and lunacy are merely reversions to a condition in which present consciousness is in the ascendant and has escaped the control of unconscious forces. We speak of people being "out of their senses," when they have in fact fallen ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... this, however, came to nothing; and simply because she positively would not quarrel. And the jealousy fell through, because there was no decent subject for such a passion, unless it had settled upon an old music-master whom lunacy itself could not adopt as a rival. The quarrel meantime, which never prospered with the daughter, silently kindled on my part towards the father. His offence was this. At dinner, I naturally placed myself by the side of M., and it gave me great pleasure to touch her ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... of the most extraordinary invention, which the metal-workers of the seventeenth century particularly gave their imaginations licence to construct. Indeed, the German artists of that period seem to have had a spice of lunacy in their compositions, and the works of Breughel were rivalled and outdone by many others whose fancies were of most unearthly type. Salvator Rosa in Italy, and Callot in France, occasionally depicted what their grotesque and mystic imaginings suggested, and Teniers gave the world witch-pictures; ...
— Rambles of an Archaeologist Among Old Books and in Old Places • Frederick William Fairholt
... stigmatizing us for a "species of swelled heads" (espece d'enfles). We proceeded sedately, my companion muttered with rage, and I was able to resume my thinking. It was based on the deep persuasion that the man at my side was insane with quite another than Carnivalesque lunacy which comes on at one stated time of the year. He was fundamentally mad, though not perhaps completely; which of course made him all the greater, I won't ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... occasion—'Coleridge! the connections of a Declamation are not the transitions of Poetry—bad, however, as they are, they are better than "Apostrophes" and "O thou's", for at the worst they are something like common sense. The others are the grimaces of Lunacy.'—S. T. COLERIDGE. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... horseback a few paces off, had a mind to ride forward and protest. To his mind the order spelt sheer lunacy. The barrier, to begin with, stood close on twenty feet high, built of rough timbers staked in the ground and densely packed with furze. Nothing could be seen behind it but the top of the second barrier, which at fifty yards distance guarded ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... should confront his end with more philosophy. I made him no reply, therefore, in words; and presently the evening fell so chill that I was glad, for my own sake, to kindle a fire. And yet God knows, in such an open spot, and the country alive with savages, the act was little short of lunacy. Ballantrae seemed never to observe me; but at last, as I was about parching a little corn, he ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Such-zen looking for a River, address care of Tirthankars' Temple, Benares. P. M.—Please note boy is apple of eye, and rupees shall be sent per hoondi three hundred per annum. For God Almighty's sake." Now, is that ravin' lunacy or a business proposition? I ask you, because I'm fairly at my ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... together with the 'membra' of my writing-desk, the sixteen beginnings of poems never to be finished! Do you think I would not have shot myself last year, had I not luckily recollected that Mrs. C * * and Lady N * *, and all the old women in England would have been delighted;—besides the agreeable 'Lunacy,' of the 'Crowner's Quest,' and the regrets of two or three or half a dozen? Be assured that I would live for two reasons, or more;—there are one or two people whom I have to put out of the world, and as many into it, before ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... administration, Governor Rice took a deep interest in the cause of education in the State, as president of the board of education, and in visiting schools and colleges for personal inspection. He also carefully watched over the several State institutions for correction, for reform, and for lunacy and charity, encouraging, as opportunity offered, both officers and inmates, and, at the same time, unsparing in merited ...
— Bay State Monthly, Volume I, No. 2, February, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... the year 1828, when as Lord Ashley he seconded Mr. Gordon's Bill, and first came publicly forward in support of measures designed to advance the interests of the insane. A laborious and sometimes fruitless examination of Hansard, from the earliest period of lunacy legislation, has been necessary in order to present a continuous narrative of the successive steps by which so great ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke
... the stringency of the filial tie needs relaxation. Already it is recognised that in cases of cruelty the child may be divorced from the parent. But there is a hopeless incompatibility of temper and temperament which is not necessarily attended with cruelty. Drunkenness, lunacy, and criminality should also be regarded as valid grounds for divorce, the parent being no longer allowed to bear the name of ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... about it to explain it; but I promise you that if you will be patient he will shew you the two most wonderful works of art in the world, and that they will contain some of my own very best workmanship. Let me add that they will inspire a loathing that will cure you of the lunacy of art for ever. [He sits down next the Newly Born, who pouts and turns a very cold right shoulder to him, a demonstration ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... do I think (or else this brain of mine Hunts not the trail of policy[9] so sure As it hath us'd to do), that I have found The very cause of Hamlet's lunacy. ...
— Hamlet • William Shakespeare
... creature he always were, and will be; but, Betsy, I have this wery momink fixed him up with a shoehorn in his mouth, as was lying round providential, and the strings of my bonnet, and the last word as he will say this blessed night was some lunacy about "denouncing the clogeure," as won't give ...
— Old Friends - Essays in Epistolary Parody • Andrew Lang
... or two extracts from the novel "Der Mondschtige,"[18] the title of which is misleading since it in no way treats of one afflicted with lunacy but of a veritable moon lover, presumably our poet himself. There the nephew, Ludwig Licht(!), writes to his uncle: "It is now three months since I had a very serious quarrel with my friend, a quarrel which almost separated us, for he mocked at ...
— Sleep Walking and Moon Walking - A Medico-Literary Study • Isidor Isaak Sadger
... why Mr. MacColl, with his passionate pleading for a living national architecture, for official recognition of past and present English art, is thought by many good people quite odd. How he managed to attract the notice of any but the Lunacy Commissioners I cannot conceive. Valued critic, admired artist, model keeper, I only hope he will ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross
... feeling that the whole affair was stark lunacy. Here were we three simpletons sitting in a London flat and projecting a mission into the enemy's citadel without an idea what we were to do or how we were to do it. And one of the three was looking at the ceiling, ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... still scarcely seeming to hear. "But why in the world? . . . Ah, there he goes!—and Brother Bonaday with him. They are off to the river, for Brother Copas carries his rod. What a strange fascination has that dry-fly fishing! And I can remember old anglers discussing it as a craze, a lunacy." ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... make people stare by doing better than others, why, make them stare till they stare their eyes out. But consider how easy it is to make people stare by being absurd. I may do it by going into a drawing-room without my shoes. You remember the gentleman in The Spectator, who had a commission of lunacy taken out against him for his extreme singularity, such as never wearing a wig, but a night-cap. Now, Sir, abstractedly, the night-cap was best; but, relatively, the advantage was overbalanced by his making the boys run ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... Railroad, he could not have been more astonished than he had been at the unaccountable change of heart of Jethro Bass. He did not know what to make of it, and told his colleagues so; and at first they feared one of two things,—treachery or lunacy. But a little later a rumor reached Mr. Balch's ears that Jethro's hatred of Isaac D. Worthington was at the bottom of his reappearance in public life, although Jethro himself never mentioned Mr. Worthington's ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... the burgomaster, was forced to make police regulations concerning the domestic animals, as, seized with lunacy, they rendered the streets of ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... though, the point will bear reasoning, A small taste of onion the flavor increases. As the sauce curdle may, Should it: the process stay, Patiently do it again in due order; For, if you chance to spoil Vinegar, eggs, and oil, Still to proceed would on lunacy border. ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... number of admissions to asylums is the same for both sexes among married people (i.e., 8.5), but for the single it is larger among the men (4.8 to 4.5), as also it is among the widowed (17.9 to 13.9) (Fifty-sixth Annual Report of the Commissioners in Lunacy, England and Wales, 1902, p. 141). This would seem to indicate that when living apart from men the tendency to insanity is less in women, but is raised to the male level when the sexes live ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... allowed a great deal of licence in consequence of their weak-mindedness. Accordingly, the impostors above mentioned, who used generally to eke out the gifts of the charitable by stealing, when detected in their theft, would plead, as a rule, lunacy as an excuse ...
— Little Folks (October 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... small neglects of their own life. Consequently, observe what happens: the Duchesse de Langeais (see "History of the Thirteen") makes herself a nun for the lack of ten minutes' patience; Judge Popinot (see "Commission in Lunacy") puts off till the morrow the duty of examining the Marquis d'Espard; Charles Grandet (see "Eugenie Grandet") goes to Paris from Bordeaux instead of returning by Nantes; and such events are called chance or fatality! A touch ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... anything like anybody else. There was always some diverting bit of individual lunacy to make his proceedings interesting. This morning Riverton discovered that Emma Campbell was going away, too. Emma appeared in a black cashmere dress, a blue-and-white checked gingham apron on which a basket of flowers was embroidered in red cross-stitch, and ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... base of the thumb, is excessively developed, and indicates capacity for gentleness, for chivalry, for tenderness and love. The Mount of the Moon is small. That is good. There will be no disturbance of the brain, no propensity towards lunacy. Mars is not excessive, but it is strong, and he will be bold ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... whatever color, is indicative of elegance, of taste, of refinement, of wit, of intelligence. Weakly marked eyebrows indicate a feeble constitution and a tendency to melancholia, Deep sunken eyes are selfish, while eyes in which the whole iris shows indicate erraticism, if not lunacy. Round eyes are indicative of innocence; strongly protuberant eyes of weakness of both mind and body. Eyes small and close together typify cunning, while those far apart and open indicate frankness. The normal distance ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... think so. You've fought for years for your tests and your atmosphere with plain business men not able to understand such lunacy. Quite right ... atmosphere's all that matters. If one and one don't make two by ...
— Waste - A Tragedy, In Four Acts • Granville Barker
... RAMSDEN. [beside himself] Stuff! lunacy! There is a rascal in our midst, a libertine, a villain worse than a murderer; and we are not to learn who he is! In our ignorance we are to shake him by the hand; to introduce him into our homes; to trust our ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... analysed and found consonant with all the best convictions of my understanding; and the imagery and diction of which had collected round those convictions my noblest as well as my most delightful feelings; that I should admit such lines to be mere nonsense or lunacy, is too much for the most ingenious arguments to effect. But that such a revolution of taste should be brought about by a few broad assertions, seems little less than impossible. On the contrary, it would require an effort of charity not to dismiss the ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... hysterical laugh of Louisa that she had seen him. In the darkness he could not follow fast, from ignorance of the localities, until he found himself upon the stairs. Louisa, dragging her sister along, felt strong as with the strength of lunacy, but Lottchen hung like a weight of lead upon her. She rushed into the room, but at the very entrance Lottchen fell. At that moment the assassin exchanged his stealthy pace for a loud clattering ascent. Already he was on the topmost stair; already ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... work of wicked spirits,—so especially in cases of lunacy. Over some such cases Jesus had a peculiar power. He even imparted this power to some of the disciples, who caught his inspiration. The disciples, and probably Jesus, believed that this power extended to other sicknesses. Of the uniformity of nature ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... flabbergastered at the rather revolutionary nature of the communications; and our host every now and then throwing in a rude or caustic remark. I dreaded to think what might have been the result of a domiciliary visit paid by a Commissioner in Lunacy to that particular studio! ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... place one's happiness on the continuance of any man's affection? Would it not be painful to owe his appearance of regard more to his honour than his love? and is not my person, already faded, likelier to fade sooner, than his? On the other hand, is his life a good one? and would it not be lunacy even to risque the wretchedness of losing all situation in the world for the sake of living with a man one loves, and then to lose both companion and consolation? When I lost Mr. Thrale, every one was officious to comfort and to soothe me; but which ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... of his life under restraint, hopelessly insane, his brother and ultimate successor administering the government as regent. The late Princess Frederick of Prussia was afflicted like her brother, the last Duke of Anhalt-Bernburg, with a peculiar kind of lunacy which took the form of an invincible objection to clothing of any kind whatsoever; while one of her two sons, Prince Alexander, who died only a few months ago, suffered from a species of good-natured imbecility, which led him to offer his heart and his hand to every woman or young girl that ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... the same charge against you and the child-angel at Vesuvius. Come now, old boy, be just. You can afford to. Your wife may be a fiend in human form; and if you insist upon it, I've nothing to say. But this last notion of yours is nothing but the most wretched absurdity. It's worse. It's lunacy." ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... interrupting her and pushing back her hands, "what lunacy are you uttering? Do you imagine that I go about fiddling for pence ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... after all, if we have to choose our masters, it is less disgrace to put up with Roman emperors than with German priestesses.' Thus the common people: the chieftains used more violent language. 'It was Civilis' lunacy that had driven them to war. He wanted to remedy his private troubles[555] by ruining his country. The Batavians had incurred the wrath of heaven by blockading Roman legions, murdering Roman officers, and plunging into a war which was useful for one of them and ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... Baronne Delphine de Father Goriot The Thirteen Eugenie Grandet Cesar Birotteau Lost Illusions A Distinguished Provincial at Paris The Commission in Lunacy Scenes from a Courtesan's Life Modeste Mignon The Firm of Nucingen Another Study of Woman A Daughter of Eve The ...
— Melmoth Reconciled • Honore de Balzac
... pulled about by different alarms that, while one portion of his mind was still alert and cunning, another trembled on the brink of lunacy. One hallucination in particular took a strong hold on his credulity. The neighbour hearkening with white face beside his window, the passer-by arrested by a horrible surmise on the pavement—these ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... family called it "the reception room," now) this was the place where his aunt received callers who, she justifiably hoped, would not linger. Altogether, it struck him that it might be a good test-room for an alienist: no incipient lunacy would ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... over these romances. When unable to refute their theories, it could sneer at the authors, and answer them to the satisfaction of the generation in which they lived, at least by a general charge of lunacy. Some of their notions were no doubt as absurd as those of the astronomer in "Rasselas", who tells Imlac that he has for five years possessed the regulation of the weather, and has got the secret of making to the different ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... title of it, as a feather in one's cap, is worth nothing to Sigismund. And he is still short of money; and will forever be. Why could not he give up Brandenburg altogether; since, instead of paying, he is still making new loans from Burggraf Friedrich; and the hope of ever paying were mere lunacy! Sigismund revolves these sad thoughts too, amid his world-wide diplomacies, and efforts to heal the Church. "Pledged for 100,000 gulden," sadly ruminates Sigismund; "and 50,000 more borrowed since, by little and little; and more ever needed, especially for this grand Spanish journey!" ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol, II. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Of Brandenburg And The Hohenzollerns—928-1417 • Thomas Carlyle
... stark-raving lunacy," said Gwenlyn pleasantly. "Just like it would have seemed stark-raving lunacy, once upon a time, to think of people talking to each other when they were a thousand miles apart. Like it seemed insane to talk about flying machines. And again when they said there could be a space-drive in which ...
— Talents, Incorporated • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... to be continually putting up English women into outlandish casks; who if they be not shifted anew once in a few months grow too sour for their husbands.... He that makes coats for the moon had need take measure every noon, and he that makes for women, as often to keep them from lunacy." ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... we can understand his exclamation: "Do I lack madmen, that ye have brought this fellow to play the madman in my presence?" Thus it was that David was rescued. Thereupon he composed the Psalm beginning with the words, "I will bless the Lord at all times," which includes even the time of lunacy. (46) ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... foolscap with a bare—he called it a detached—statement of the facts about Irish lunacy. He had just begun to recount his own experience when there was a knock at the door. The housekeeper, a legacy from Dr. Farelly, came in to tell him that Constable Malone wished to speak to him. Dr. Lovaway ...
— Lady Bountiful - 1922 • George A. Birmingham
... to be made laughing stocks for the whole business world to jeer at?" he asked as he paced the office furiously, "or to be bankrupted through methods that border strongly on insanity? For it is nothing else, Mr. Denton, but raving lunacy! No man in his sober senses would entertain such a plan for the space of a second! Why, your orders about those sweat-shops were simply ridiculous! Are we to pay more for our goods than they are really worth, and then make a charity organization of ...
— For Gold or Soul? - The Story of a Great Department Store • Lurana W. Sheldon
... old Fool," I said, "knock off and come for a day's gossip. I'm rotten. There's a sympathetic sort of lunacy about you. Let's go to Staines ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... serious disapproval. "I did. I get seizures of confidential lunacy once in a while. Are you going to fuss ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... hear the tumult above him was more than he could bear without going mad. So he waited until the din abated, and the soldiers, who had ransacked the Kasbah, seemed to have deserted it; and then he crept out, made for the women's apartments, and rattled at their door. It was folly, it was lunacy; but he could not resist it, for he dared not be alone. He could hear the sounds of voices within—wailing and weeping of the women—but no one answered his knocking. Again and again he knocked with his elbows (still gripping his money-bags with both hands), until the flesh ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine
... go through the whole roster of the plagues. Suffice it to say that whatever now torments poor mortals, from tooth-ache to cold in the head, and from rheumatism to lunacy, was known to our ancestors in aggravated forms. Deleterious was the use of alcohol, the evils of which were so little understood that it was actually prescribed for many disorders of which it is a certain irritant. Add to this the ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... abdicated in favour of his son Shoko (101st sovereign), then twelve years old. This sovereign abandoned himself to the profligacy of the era. It is doubtful whether his reason was not unhinged. Some accounts say that he fell into a state of lunacy; others, that he practised magic arts. At all events he died childless in 1428, and was succeeded by a grandson of the Emperor Suko, Go-Hanazono, then in his tenth year. Thus, the claims of the Southern dynasty were ignored twice consecutively, and its partisans made armed protests in the provinces, ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... as the accepted data by which RABIES may measure his chances for life in case he executes his avowed purpose, but I would impress upon him the fact that these are necessary outside of New-York only. Here proof of the lunacy of the maiden aunt would ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 8, May 21, 1870 • Various
... forward, grinning, his latent lunacy showing for a moment in his red eyes. Confidentially, he ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... rather of the Bloomfield sort, too largely ballasted with prose. His ethics are of the Poor Richard school, and the main chance which calls forth all his energy is altogether of the belly. He never has those fine intervals of lunacy into which his cousins, the catbird and the mavis, are apt to fall. But for a' that and twice as muckle 's a' that, I would not exchange him for all the cherries that ever came out of Asia Minor. With whatever faults, ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... but friendship for England. I ask you, what British interests are threatened by this inevitable clash between the Slav and the Teuton? It is miserable enough for France to be dragged in. It would be lunacy for England. Therefore, though it is true that serious matters are pending, though, alas! I must return at once to see what help I can afford my country, never for a moment believe, any of you, that there exists the slightest chance of war between ...
— The Double Traitor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... even a liven soul, gentle or simple, can stand on level ground. As to getten up hill to the church, 'tis perfect lunacy. And I speak of foot-passengers. As to horses and carriage, 'tis murder to think of 'em. I am going to send straight as a line into the breakfast-room, and say 'tis a closer.... Hullo—here's Clerk Crickett and John Day a-comen! Now just look at 'em and picture a wedden ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... mists of the unknown future, like some black cliff from the clouds that wreath around it. Is it not strange that the surest thing is the thing that we forget most of all? It sometimes seems to me as if the sky rained down opiates upon people, as if all mankind were in a conspiracy of lunacy, because they, with one accord, ignore the most prominent and forget the only certain fact about their future; and in all their calculations do not' so number their days' as to 'apply' their 'hearts unto wisdom.' 'Go thou thy way until the end,' and let thy way be marked out with ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... doubts which had before transiently occurred to my mind, as to the reality of the alleged disease, and the reports of his medical attendant, were far from establishing the existence of any thing like lunacy. Under this uncertainty, I deemed it right to communicate to my parents, that if I were to consider Lord Byron's past conduct as that of a person of sound mind, nothing could induce me to return to him. It therefore appeared expedient, both to them and myself, to consult the ablest advisers. ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... arrive and make lunacy rampant, and a whole city is left after such a visitation an asylum of melancholia—Mad Melbourne. Lunacy frequently takes the form of egotism. Peasants imagine themselves princes; Calibans believe themselves to be Adonises; beggars imagine themselves millionaires. ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... now she has only to write me a line and say, 'My dear des Lupeaulx, you will oblige me by doing such and such a thing,' and it is done at once. We are engaged at this very moment in getting a commission of lunacy on her husband. Ah! you women, you can get what you want by the bestowal of a few favors. Well, then, my dear child, bewitch the minister. I'll help you; it is my interest to do so. Yes, I wish he had a woman who could influence him; he wouldn't ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... Teampull Ronain and its burial ground Cladh Ronain. St. Ronan is said to have been Abbot of Kingarth, Bute, where he died in 737. Holy wells bear his name at Strowan (Perthshire), Chapelton in Strathdon (Aberdeenshire), and the Butt of Lewis; the latter is famed for the cure of lunacy. ...
— A Calendar of Scottish Saints • Michael Barrett
... the pestilence, though rarer, are visitations yet wider in their desolation. Sickness and commercial ill-luck, if narrower, are more frequent scourges. And most of all, or with most darkness in its train, comes the sickness of the brain—lunacy—which, visiting nearly one thousand in every million, must, in every populous nation, make many ruins in each particular day. 'Babylon in ruins,' says a great author, 'is not so sad a sight as a human soul ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... and purged from the spleen"; Gk. melancholia, black bile. See Sams. Agon. 600, "humours black That mingle with thy fancy"; and Nash's Terrors of the Night (1594): "(Melancholy) sinketh down to the bottom like the lees of the wine, corrupteth the blood, and is the cause of lunacy." ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... indeed, gave indications of lunacy. He marched up to the road-gate, and stood close to it, so that the barbed wire top was even with his hair; then he backed off, and gazed first at the gate, then at the bewildered Hicks, while he grinned at the dazed squad in ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... for his actions and to give satisfaction for them—like the unscrupulous God-forsaken clerk that he is—he will defend himself as though it were the Peace for which he was being tried. Not that he wishes to account for more than is charged against him—that would be lunacy. No! He sees rather that in all his own proceedings no good can be found—that his crimes are his whole history; while a defence of the Peace, if it has no other merits, has at least the kindly sound of the name to recommend it. {96} I fear, indeed, men of Athens, I fear that, unconsciously, we ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 1 • Demosthenes
... Agathe's father, and he has retired to an eligible island where he may repent his cruelty to his daughter. Julio tells his tale, and goes mad again. The apostrophe to Lunacy which follows is marked "Beautiful" by Aytoun, and is in the spirit of Charles Lamb's remark that madness has pleasures ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... these men who, in spite of their lunacy, had an eye to business, and begged pathetically for coppers, though of what use they could be to them in that place I cannot imagine. I saw no girls under twelve years of age. There were several boys who appeared scarcely ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... more like the Tara he knew. "Very well. Why accuse me of incipient lunacy? I care, too. Always have done. Think how topping it would be, you and I together, exploring all the wonderland of our Game and Mummy's tales—Udaipur, Amber, Chitor, perhaps the shrine ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... throne of Mercy, and (let philosophers and theologians explain it as they may) instantaneous peace of mind followed the sight, or fancied sight, of that noon-tide star! The load was removed which threatened to crush my brain into lunacy, the "salt surf waves of bitterness" were stilled, and within me there ...
— Six Years in the Prisons of England • A Merchant - Anonymous
... toward the hall door. "Very good!" he observed with grim determination. "I think he'll cure your lunacy." ...
— The Woman-Haters • Joseph C. Lincoln
... 'insanity,' 'lunacy,' 'unsoundness of mind,' 'mental derangement,' 'madness,' and 'mental alienation or aberration,' are indifferently applied to those states of disordered mind in which the person loses the power of regulating his actions and conduct according ...
— Aids to Forensic Medicine and Toxicology • W. G. Aitchison Robertson
... Patients may present themselves in a week's time. Patients may communicate with Mr. Armadale, or Mr. Armadale may communicate with patients. A note may be smuggled out of the house, and may reach the Commissioners in Lunacy. Even in the case of an unlicensed establishment like mine, those gentlemen—no! those chartered despots in a land of liberty—have only to apply to the Lord Chancellor for an order, and to enter (by heavens, to enter My Sanitarium!) and search the house from top to bottom ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... inseparable are the problems of the districts, the tribal area, and of Afghanistan; and any attempt to place the districts under a separate control could only mean friction, inefficiency, and disaster. The proposal is, indeed, little short of administrative lunacy. There is, however, an underlying method in the madness that has formulated it, namely, the self-interest of a clever minority, which I need not now dissect. I trust that if this proposal should go further it will be ...
— Essays in Liberalism - Being the Lectures and Papers Which Were Delivered at the - Liberal Summer School at Oxford, 1922 • Various
... divinities to be adored, and we are to be taught to call God, Jupiter; the Virgin, Venus; and Christ, Cupid! The Iliad of Homer allegorised, is converted into a Greek bible of the arcana of nature! Extraordinary as this literary lunacy may appear, we must observe, that it stands not singular in the annals of the history of the human mind. The Florentine Academy, which Cosmo founded, had, no doubt, some classical enthusiasts; but who, perhaps, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... cynic," remarked Dr. Theophilus, smiling, "and I don't doubt that she has her excellent reasons, as usual; most cynics have. A woman, however, has got to believe in love to the point of lunacy or become a scoffer. What I contend, now, is that love isn't moonshine, but that however solid a thing it may be, it isn't, after all, as solid as ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... askance at this sudden outbreak of the clergyman, for it verged upon lunacy, and lunacy is to them a fearsome and supernatural thing. One of them rode forward and spoke with the Emir. When he returned he said something to his comrades, one of whom closed in upon each side of ...
— A Desert Drama - Being The Tragedy Of The "Korosko" • A. Conan Doyle
... at her feet, pointed an uncannily long forefinger at them. "The crossings and sidewalks are slush—and you, a singer, without overshoes! Lunacy! Lunacy!" ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... that in this respect I resemble Gontcharov, whom I don't like, who is ten heads taller than I am in talent. I have not enough passion; add to that this sort of lunacy: for the last two years I have for no reason at all ceased to care about seeing my work in print, have become indifferent to reviews, to literary conversations, to gossip, to success and failure, to good pay—in short, I have gone downright ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... hallucinations, but these were mainly the chronic false perceptions of maniacs, of drunkards, and of persons in bad health such as Nicolai and Mrs. A. The hallucinations of persons of genius—Jeanne d'Arc, Luther, Socrates, Pascal, were by some attributed to lunacy in these famous people. Scarcely any writers before Mr. Galton had recognised the occurrence of hallucinations once in a life, perhaps, among healthy, sober, and mentally sound people. If these were known to occur, ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... And can you by no drift of circumstance Get from him why he puts on this Confusion: Grating so harshly all his dayes of quiet With turbulent and dangerous Lunacy ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... falsehood. If he had been a citizen of the Southern States, he might have suborned witnesses to prove that there was black blood in the veins of Valentine Hawkehurst. If he had not been opposed to so strong an opponent as Dr. Jedd, he might have tried to get a commission of lunacy to declare Charlotte Halliday a madwoman, and thus invalidate her marriage. As it was, he knew that he could do nothing. He had failed. All was said ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... that all thought is explained by vibrations and "vibratiuncles" of the brain, and that what they consider their arms and legs are not arms and legs but ideas, then, says the lecturer, they will pardonably identify Philosophy with Lunacy. "Bishop Berkeley destroyed this world in one octavo volume; and nothing remained after his time but Mind; which experienced a similar fate at the hand of Mr. Hume in 1737.... But is there any one out of Bedlam who doubts of the existence of matter? who doubts of his ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... rash, at Madame de Serizy's, as to tell the story, with some added pleasantries, in the presence of MM. de Bauvan and de Granville, of her attempt to get a commission of lunacy appointed to sit on her husband, the Marquis d'Espard. Bianchon had told it to me. Monsieur de Granville's opinion, supported by those of Bauvan and Serizy, influenced the decision of the Keeper of the Seals. They all were afraid of the Gazette des Tribunaux, and dreaded the scandal, and the ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... "the judgment of their peers" been pronounced against women exercising their right to vote. No disfranchised person is allowed to be judge or juror—and none but disfranchised persons can be women's peers; nor has the Legislature passed laws excluding them on account of idiocy or lunacy; nor yet the courts convicted them of bribery, larceny, or any infamous crime. Clearly, then, there is no constitutional ground for the exclusion of women from the ballot-box in the State of New York. No barriers whatever stand to-day between women and the exercise of their right to vote ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... observer you may be quite right. I may be a lunatic. I feel much like one just now. It is lunacy to go climbing back to a level in society from which I have been kicked. But as I knelt there by that little fire, before you came, yearning sprang up in me—and I had thought all that sort of yearning was dead in me. A moment later came habiliments of a gentleman, borne in ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... acquaintance. Adams was the more puzzled because he could not believe Sumner so mad as to quarrel both with Fish and with Grant. A quarrel with Seward and Andrew Johnson was bad enough, and had profited no one; but a quarrel with General Grant was lunacy. Grant might be whatever one liked, as far as morals or temper or intellect were concerned, but he was not a man whom a light-weight cared to challenge for a fight; and Sumner, whether he knew it or not, was a very light weight in the Republican Party, if separated ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... mud, and then invite four or five comrades, all arrayed in much warlike impedimenta, but lacking more extra covering than a waterproof sheet each, to the hole to spend two nights and a day in it—I should be credited with lunacy. Yet I should be offering a fair sample of front-line accommodation during the ...
— The Story of the 2/4th Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry • G. K. Rose
... it sheer lunacy, but—I've a sort of idea that if I'm to go on at all, myself, it must be on those lines. Modern poetic drama—It's that ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... had been shocked to learn from some one who happened in just in time to prevent the tragedy that Mrs. Martin had gone suddenly insane and had tried to murder both of her children. She must go to the asylum, of course; but pending the preliminary trial for lunacy she lay silent on her bed with staring, horrified eyes, surrounded by watchful neighbors. Suddenly toward night she had grown restless and had implored them to send for the Methodist preacher. To quiet her the messenger had come, and William made ...
— A Circuit Rider's Wife • Corra Harris
... of destroying that beautiful stuff can have entered the mind of man I cannot fathom. I think I have got him persuaded to leave well alone. It must be nothing short of stark lunacy." ...
— Looking Seaward Again • Walter Runciman
... and as if disdaining complaint, he franticly snatched up a pitch-fork, drove it at me, and, I luckily avoiding it, struck the prongs into the barn-door; with the exclamation, 'Damn your soul! I'll make you feel me!' The moment after he was seized with a sense of his own lunacy, turned as pale as death, and stood aghast with horror! My supposed crime was that I had eaten some milk, the last of which I myself had seen the dog lap. Perceiving the terror of his mind, I took courage and told him, 'Jowler eat the milk: I saw him, just ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... value, by renouncing her heart, denying her purpose. For days she would tie her kerchief over her ears and eyes, and crouch in a corner, strangling her impulses. She even malingered, refused food, became dumb. And she might have succeeded in making herself salable through incipient lunacy, if through no other way, had she been able to maintain her role long enough. But some woman or baby always was falling into some emergency ...
— Balcony Stories • Grace E. King
... lunacy is largely on the increase in Ireland has been pronounced by the committee which sat on the question in Dublin to be mainly due, not only to excessive drinking, but to the assimilation of ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... century. Procter was, indeed, already a veteran in 1854, having been born in 1787, and bred to the bar, to which he was admitted in 1831. But he spent the active thirty years of his life in the discharge of that function which seems often sought by respectable Englishmen-commissioner of lunacy. He sent my father a small volume containing the Songs, and some fragments; they fully deserved their reputation. The fragments were mostly scraps of dramatic dialogue, of which one at ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... Thine innocence: alas, my Lords, he's desperate, And talks he knows not what: you must not credit 290] His lunacy; I can my self disprove This accusation: Cassilane, be yet More mercifull; I ...
— The Laws of Candy - Beaumont & Fletcher's Works (3 of 10) • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... sand-spit in the Sea of Timor. I often found this deafness a very serious drawback, especially when hunting. I was sometimes at a loss to hear the "coo-ee" or call of my natives. Fortunate men! they did not even understand what deafness meant. Lunacy also was unknown among them, and such a thing as suicide no native can possibly grasp or understand. In all my wanderings I only met one idiot or demented person. He had been struck by a falling tree, and was worshipped as ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... lunacy strike you, Bertie, as being a very eerie thing? It is a disease of the soul. To think that you may have a man of noble mind, full of every lofty aspiration, and that a gross physical cause, such as the fall of a spicule of bone from the inner table of his skull ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... faultless kings run down by common cry, For vice, oppression, and for tyranny. What standard is there in a fickle rout, Which, flowing to the mark, runs faster out? Nor only crowds but Sanhedrims may be Infected with this public lunacy, And share the madness of rebellious times, To murder monarchs for imagined crimes. 790 If they may give and take whene'er they please, Not kings alone, the Godhead's images, But government itself at length must fall To nature's state, where all have right to all. Yet, grant our lords ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... healing was found for Burke, or, haply, from bodily debility, mental weakness might have developed itself into mental malady; and the irritability of weakness, to which cultivated minds are often most subjected, might have ended, even for a time, if not wisely treated, in the violence of lunacy. It was natural that the doctor's daughter should assist in the doctor's work; and, perhaps, not less natural that the patient should be fascinated by her. In a short time the cure was perfected, and Burke obtained the greatest earthly blessing for which ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack |
